#5: "We Must Communicate the Bible as the Word of God"

SCRIPTURE:

2 Timothy 3:16-17

2 Peter 1:16-21

"We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

2 Corinthians 5:18-20

"God…gave us the ministry of reconciliation… And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us."

INTRO:

We MUST communicate our faith to our world, if the people of our world are to come to know Christ and be reconciled to God.

And I am also convinced that to accomplish this, we must communicate that the Bible is not just "a" holy book among other so-called holy books of the world’s great religions, but that it is "the one and only" inspired Word of God.

So I want to deal with two questions this morning: (1) WHY do we need to communicate the Bible as the Word of God? and (2) HOW do we do that?

First of all,

I believe we need to communicate the Bible as the Word of God for at least three reasons…

Reason number one: People need an authoritative source of truth.

There are so many voices today telling people what they should believe and do. Some are saying that truth is one thing to one person and another to someone else. Some are saying that there is no such thing as truth. Still others contend that there are many sources of truth, including other sacred writings, such as the Koran. One church’s teaching contradicts that of another. The teachings of some churches seem to change with the times, and traditions of men have found their way into the mix.

The Bible is the Word of God. It is truth. It is from God. We have irrefutable evidence that both the Old and New Testament Scriptures have been accurately preserved through the centuries. For example, before the discovery of the printing press, the Scriptures were laboriously copied by hand by only the most efficiently trained and educated. So exacting were the scribes that before beginning to copy any portion of Scripture, they first counted every word and then every letter. After a copy had been completed, the words and letters were again numbered, and if the totals did not exactly correspond, the entire manuscript was destroyed, and the whole thing was done over again. Or if one incorrect letter was found, the total manuscript was destroyed.

The Bible is the only reliable source of truth and has been approved and preserved by the inspiration, authority and power of God!

President John Quincy Adams once called both houses of Congress together for a special meeting. He walked into the chamber carrying two "bushel" baskets. He said, "The bushel basket in my right hand came from South Carolina; the one in my left hand comes from the city of New York. One of these bushel measures contains sixty-eight cubic inches more than the other one." He paused and allowed the implications to sink in.

Then he walked to a table and picked up two one-pound weights. He said, "The weight in my right hand came from Massachusetts; the other one came from Maine. One of them weighs nearly an ounce more than the other. He paused for a few moments and then concluded, "Gentlemen, we need a standard measurement and a standard weight for the United States of America."

Thus was born the Bureau of Weights and Measures.

Similarly, we need such a standard. That standard is the Bible: God’s inspired, and therefore authoritative, Word!

Those four questions are:

(1) Who is God, and what is He like?

(2) Who am I, and where did I come from?

(3) Why am I here, and where am I going?

(4) How can I be right with God?

Apart from the Bible, answers to these questions are only guesses and speculations. Only the Bible answers these questions decisively, consistently, and satisfactorily.

If a person’s view of God comes from any source other than the Bible, it will not be a true picture of the one true God, and such an erroneous view of God will foster all sorts of skewed ideas.

The Bible is the only reliable source of truth about God and the relationship He wants to have with His human creation. Only by communicating its message will we see our world reconciled to God.

Second,

How do we communicate the Bible as the Word of God to our world? Let me suggest the following:

Even though it was written over a period of 1,600 years by forty different people, there is an unequaled continuity and absence of any contradiction. No other so-called "sacred writings" can substantially make such a claim.

2. We can point out its unequaled influence on mankind continuously through the centuries.

As people have read and obeyed the admonition of the Scriptures, lives have been changed, resulting in changes in families, in governments, in nations, and in the world!

Like the blacksmith’s anvil, it has survived the hammer blows of all sorts of skeptics and unbelievers for thousands of years. The French skeptic Voltaire said in the 18^th century, "In less than a hundred years the Bible will be discarded and Christianity swept from the earth." Within a few years, Voltaire was dead, his printing press was printing Bibles, and his home was the depot of a Bible society!

4. We can point out its historical and scientific accuracy.

While the Bible is not a history or science textbook, it has been proven time and again to be historically and scientifically accurate.

Biblical characters whose existence historians challenged for centuries have been proven by modern discoveries to be genuine historical characters.

Scientific discoveries made only in recent times may be found in passages of the Bible that were written thousands of years prior to their discovery by science!

Volumes have been written recounting such examples of historical and scientific accuracy. One of my favorites concerns belief in the sun as the world’s source of light. Until the 20^th century, it was generally agreed that the light of the universe emanated from our sun and other luminous bodies, but now scientists believe they have proven that light existed before the sun and its counterparts in the solar system. Duh. Reread Genesis 1. That fact is already there! Listen to verses one and two: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ’Let there be light,’ and there was light…" Then, all the way down in verses 14 through 19, we are told that God made the sun, moon, and stars! In other words, God created light, then he created the sun, moon, and stars to govern, or regulate, the light. It took man thousands of years to discover what the Bible revealed almost 4,000 years ago!

5. We can point out the prophecies that have been fulfilled.

Again, volumes have been written recounting the literally hundreds of Bible prophecies that have been unmistakably fulfilled.

One of my favorites is about the city of Tyre, a prominent Phoenician city dating back to 2750 B.C. It consisted of a mainland city and an island city a short distance from the coast. In Ezekiel 26, written about 593 B.C., it was prophesied about the great city of Tyre:

• The mainland city would be destroyed;
• Its "stones, timber, and rubble" would be thrown into the sea;
• It would be made "a bare rock" where fishermen would spread their nets; and
• It would never be rebuilt.

In 585 B.C., just eight years later, Nebuchadnezzar began a 13-year siege of the mainland city, and eventually left it in ruins. However, he did not throw its ruins into the sea, and the island city survived since Nebuchadnezzar had no navy.

However, in 332 B.C., Alexander the Great came along, laid siege to the island city, and destroyed it, gaining access by using the ruins of the mainland city to build a causeway. Neither the mainland city nor the island city was ever rebuilt, and this very day fishermen may be seen drying their nets where the city of Tyre used to be.

Over one hundred prophecies about a Messiah, some written as much as 1,500 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, were fulfilled in him exactly as they were written.

Here is where your testimony really fits in. We can communicate to the world our personal experiences that show how the teachings and principles of the Bible really work.

CONCLUSION:

A typical young man of today’s society said, "I feel frustrated with God. If He is there, why doesn’t He answer me, talk to me, show Himself? In a time of desperation I prayed to Him, but nothing happened, and things kept turning out wrong. I felt like I was talking to an imaginary friend."

There are a lot of people out there feeling just that way. They’re being jerked around, their lives are a mess, and they want to believe that there really is a God Who really cares, but since they can’t seem to hear from Him, they feel He doesn’t care or that He really doesn’t exist. We need to be their friends and show them that He really does care, and that He’s written a letter of love to them called the Bible.